Spoiler Warning – spoilers for Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Pulp Fiction
Linear story-telling would be a story that starts at the beginning and ends at the end. an increasingly common story-telling trope in movies is non-linear storytelling, where the story is told in different sections, with the chronological sequence of events being distorted. Sometimes this is just an interesting idea to tell stories in different ways but for some films, this very idea is crucial to the film.
Memento
Undoubtedly the film where this is most important is Memento. Christopher Nolan’s first full-length film has a narrative that is almost impossible to put in some sort of chronological order. This is because we follow the character of Lenny – a man investigating the murder of his wife. The problem is that in the attack that killed his wife Lenny is also injured and suffers from anterograde amnesia. This is a kind of amnesia where the memories before the injury remain but new ones are unable to be made. You could meet Lenny for the first time, leave the room, come back two minutes later and he wouldn’t remember you, once his short-term memory has moved on nothing is saved. This means Lenny himself has a hell of a time trying to navigate life and solve a crime. We learn at the end of the film just how disjointed the narrative is. The confusion that the viewer has in trying to keep track of what is happening gives them just a small glimpse into Lenny’s life. In the way that the audience can be manipulated into making certain conclusions or assumptions by someone who has control over how the information is relayed so can Lenny.
Pulp fiction
Perhaps the most famous example of this is Pulp Fiction. While this purely a storytelling choice unlike some of the other films mentioned, if one were to simply rearrange Pulp Fiction and put it in chronological order it would be a worse film. The film opens in a diner about to be held up and ends there as well – in between a lot happens, including the death of one of the people in the diner. Pulp Fiction tells several interconnected stories – a diner holdup, two gangsters going to reclaim their boss’s property, the same two gangsters accidentally killing someone and having to clean that mess up, one gangster taking the boss’s wife out on a platonic date and a boxer being paid to throw a fight who instead takes that money bets on himself and wins. The stories weave in and out of each other and it is not entirely clear when they place in relation to one another. Famously in one scene John Travolta’s Vincent Vega is killed by Bruce Willis’ Butch and then appears in the next scene – as chronologically his death is still in the future.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Like Memento the brilliant Eternal Sunshine focuses on memory. But in Eternal Sunshine the hook is a company will delete painful memories, so bad breakups and so on. Joel finds out his girlfriend has chosen to delete him from her memory and so decides to do the same thing. Most of the film takes place within Joel’s mind while he sleeps and the memories are deleted. There is a handy trick in the film – similar to one used in Memento – of Clem’s hair changing colour, she mentions she dyes it often and so this can be used as a rough measure of “when” we are. As the film progresses we learn that some of what we are seeing is not the setup of their relationship but that they meet again AFTER both have deleted each other from their respective memories. The time spent in Joel’s mind is inherently disjointed especially when to avoid the memory deletion Joel goes to memories that do not contain Clem.
In Television
There are a number of TV shows that have used non-linear narrative or at least elements of it. So there is Rick and Morty, a tv show featuring time travel, memory manipulation, inter-dimensional travel, literally the Devil, we have absolutely no idea who is a clone, a robot, from another dimension, what year it is, is this in our universe, is the universe simply a car battery? We don’t know. Inside No. 9 has an episode where we start at the end and jump back every scene, each time learning new things and different identities of the character, like Pulp Fiction to simply reverse the film it wouldn’t be as good. Doctor Who makes fantastic use of time travel to present a non-linear relationship, the character of River Song was the Doctor’s wife but when we first meet the character the Doctor doesn’t know who she is and over the course of several seasons and different Doctors their relationship is filled in. They often talk about “spoilers” – saying things the other doesn’t know about yet.
Also Read: ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Can Open For More Indigenous Storytelling and Talent
